by Jonas Saul
“Did he give you a unit number?” Mason asked.
Calder glanced at his phone, slid his thumb along the screen, looked out through the windshield, and pointed. “It’s that one.”
Mason opened his door with his good hand. “Then let’s go get her.”
They approached the buildings, a more modern version of townhouses. These units were wider and higher, with some offering an outside patio on the roof. Mason couldn’t recall how old they were, but he knew a couple of people who lived on this street. One was a friend and the other one was a guy he’d arrested for possession last year.
At the door, he stayed back a few feet, ready to pull his weapon if needed. Sarah was unpredictable. He’d never admit it, but she was also very good in close quarters.
Calder hammered on the door. “Open up,” he shouted. “Police.” He waited the requisite five seconds, pounded on the door again, shouted, “Police,” once more, then checked their flank.
Footsteps approached from the other side of the door. The peephole darkened. For some reason, that always pissed Mason off. They’d shouted “Police” twice, but everyone always checked. He had yet to meet a group of home-invaders running around the city banging on doors and yelling “Police.”
“Open up,” Mason shouted.
The snick of a lock was the first sound of compliance. Then the door eased open enough for a bearded man to peek out.
“Can I help you?” the man asked.
“I’m Officer Calder.” He flipped open his ID wallet, then snapped it shut. “This is Officer Mason. And you are?”
“Trever Florko. Is there a problem, Officer?”
“Can we come in?”
Florko opened the door farther and stepped aside, his left hand holding a full glass of red wine.
Before Calder moved, he said, “Are there others in the house?”
“Just me and my wife.”
Mason fixed him with a cold stare, his hand still at the ready. “You wouldn’t be lying to us now would you, Mr. Florko?”
Florko shook his head, mouth open, the wine sloshing in the goblet. “No sir. Why would I lie?” He looked like he’d been caught cheating on his taxes and the auditor just asked damning questions.
“Because if you’re harboring a fugitive—”
“Harboring a what?” Florko said, composing himself. “You mean that girl from the security store?” He looked from Calder to Mason, then back to Calder, no doubt wanting to only deal with him. With the bandages and the cast, coupled with Mason’s glaring, Florko probably felt the intimidation Mason was pouring on.
Calder slipped past Florko and entered the man’s foyer. Mason moved inside the townhouse beside Calder, pushing the door closed behind him. Florko moved back several feet to a comfortable distance.
“What can you tell us about that girl today?” Calder asked.
“Uhm, she ahhh, she acted weird. A subtle hostility about her. She reminded me of a caged animal. The wrong move and you’re liable to lose your head.” Florko slurped his wine. Probably needed a drink after meeting Sarah.
“That’s her,” Mason said. “What did you talk about? Where did you take her?”
A woman emerged from a room up the hallway. Mason and Calder tensed at the same time.
Florko turned, “It’s okay, Honey. It’s the RCMP. They just have a few questions.”
“What was that about a girl?” she asked.
“I’ll explain in a moment—actually, just listen so I only have to say it once.” Florko looked back at them and nodded toward her. “My wife.”
“You were telling us about Sarah Roberts.”
“Sarah?” Florko frowned. His eyes lowered to the wine in his hand as if he was thinking. “Sarah Roberts?” he muttered. He looked back up, sipped the wine, then blinked a couple of times. “She only told me her first name.” Then his eyes widened as he thought of something and lightly slapped his forehead open-palmed. “I knew I recognized her.”
Calder exchanged a glance with Mason, then turned back to Florko. “Yes, Sarah Roberts. Look, Mr. Florko, we don’t have a lot of time. What did she say to you? Where did you take her?”
Florko had a stunned look in his eyes. He stammered a moment, then caught his breath. “She asked about a bullet-proof vest. She wanted to know where she could buy one. I told her to go to the Army Surplus store on Dayton. Then she jumped in my car and asked me to drive her the one block over. So I did. Although, she was quite persuasive.”
“How persuasive?” Mason asked, easing closer.
“Once in the car, she produced a gun. She didn’t point it at me or anything. Just set it on her lap. How could I refuse? It wasn’t like she was kidnapping me. The gun just showed up. I drove to the Army store. She jumped out and disappeared inside. Then I came right here and poured this tall baby.” He held up the wine and drank from it again.
“Is there anything else you can remember? Did she say anything else?” Calder asked.
“She asked about a street.”
“A street?” Calder and Mason exchanged a glance. “What street? And why ask you something like that? Did she think you were directory assistance or something?”
“No, nothing like that.” His wife had moved up to stand beside her husband at the mention of the gun. She rested a hand on his shoulder but he didn’t seem to notice. “She knew I was a Realtor and that I knew the area.”
Calder waved his hand, exasperated. “What street did she ask you about?”
“She had it on a piece of paper. It was the Campbell Winery street on the other side of Mission. Trumpeter Road.”
Calder turned back to Mason again. “Campbell Winery?”
Mason gave Calder a who-fuckin-knows shrug.
“Anything else?” Calder asked when he turned back.
“No. Nothing.”
“Are you aware that you aided and abetted a known criminal today, Mr. Florko?” Mason stated in his best authoritative voice. Although listening to himself speak sounded like he was talking through a pipe because of the broken nose.
“It wasn’t like I had a choice,” he pleaded. “She showed me a gun.”
“Did you report the incident to the police after dropping Miss Roberts off?” Mason asked.
“Well, no, but—”
“Then it’s bullshit. If you were actually threatened with a weapon, kidnapped—even if it was for only one minute—and made to drive someone somewhere, you should have reported it to the police. Instead, you came home for a glass of wine. Or are you commonly kidnapped at gunpoint? Does it happen so often that reporting it was a practice in futility?” Mason stepped closer. “Or have you lost faith in the RCMP?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Stop saying well, no, but!” Mason yelled.
Calder pulled out a business card and proffered it to Florko who had stepped back when Mason shouted. “Take this. Call us if you remember anything else.” Florko’s wife snatched the card from Calder’s hand.
Mason ripped open the door and almost fell as he stumbled down the steps. Calder caught up to him.
“Bit hard on the Realtor, dontcha think?” Calder said.
“Fuck you.”
“Just saying.”
“Yeah, and look at my nose. Look at my fuckin’ arm.” Mason held up the cast. “Fuck you and fuck Sarah. But most of all, fuck people like Florko who are just helping out. He didn’t help a young girl out. He helped her escape from us. He should pay for that.” Mason looked back at the townhouse. “I’ll remember his name.”
“Good,” Calder said as he dropped into the car. “Buy a house from the guy one day so he doesn’t file a complaint with your name stenciled all over it. Now, get in the fucking car and let’s go get that bitch.”
Mason bumped his cast on the center console, grimaced as the pain shot up his arm, and then cursed under his breath for an entire minute.
“Well, no, but,” Calder said in a mockery of Florko’s voice. “Can you believe that guy?”
As Calder drove toward the Army Surplus store, Mason finally got his breathing back under control.
“One day, you’re going to drive me to a rubber room where I might have to kill you.”
“Fuck you, Mason. I’ll kill you first.”
They drove the rest of the way in silence. Mason didn’t want to tell Calder how much he hated him in that moment. None of this would be happening if Calder had backed him up better out on Myra Canyon Road earlier. If Calder was a better cop, Sarah would be dead and they would be back at the station doing paperwork for days—but the bitch would be dead.
Fuck you, Calder. Just fuck you.
Chapter 33
Sarah gazed in awe at what the old man offered. The technology had advanced in ways she was unaware. She’d worn Kevlar vests before, even ones with tiny bombs attached, but nothing like the one in front of her. The British had invented a revolutionary device made of some kind of liquid.
“It’s a BAE Systems liquid body armor vest,” the clerk said. Sarah kept poking it with her finger.
“It’s very lightweight,” she said.
“The impact of the projectile is spread over a wider area with this unit—unlike Kevlar—because of the liquid. Kevlar vests sandwich about forty-five layers together to create a substance five times harder than steel.” His rudimentary demonstration by bringing his hands together didn’t offer much in the way of a visual. “Because of that, no bullet enters the body.” He tapped his chest. “But the force of the bullet is localized and can cause severe bruising and even broken ribs. What the Brits have done is sandwich ten layers,” he touched the outer rim of the BAE unit, “with their special gel between two layers of Kevlar to create an ultra-light vest that spreads the impact of the bullet over the entire surface.” He looked up to meet her eyes. “This reduces the intensity of the injury standard Kevlar allows.”
The basement of the Army Surplus store was a warehouse for the store’s extra stock. Two single lightbulbs dangled from the ceiling. Behind the clerk, a wooden door was barred and bolted shut. A weapons cache was Sarah’s guess. Upstairs, the door was locked. The old man had never met her before and couldn’t possibly know her, yet they were alone.
“Why are you helping me?” Sarah asked.
“Because of what you’re doing for the city.”
She tilted her head sideways and eyed him suspiciously. “How do you know what I’m doing for the city?”
The old man coughed into his elbow, turned away, and found a chair to sit on in the corner.
“Don’t mind me.” He tried to clear his throat, then coughed once more. “Cancer in the lungs.” When the fit was over, he placed a hand on each knee and righted himself. “Ever since those bombs went off in the city, everyone’s been watching the news. Is it ISIS? A terror cell? Business picked up here.” He inhaled, stopped the breath, then let it out. Color returned to his face. “The news said you were here and that you’d stopped other bombs from going off.” He shrugged. “I was hoping I’d get the chance to meet you.” He waved toward the upstairs area. “Then you waltz on in here looking for a vest. So I’m going to make sure you get the best one I have to offer because whatever you’re doing, lady, make no mistake, you’re volunteering to enter the ring.” He raised an index finger. “No, you’re willingly walking into a war zone and you’re doing it with your head held high. I respect that. If I was younger or fitter, I’d volunteer to go with you.”
“I appreciate your kind words, Mr …”
“Mike. Just call me Mike.”
“Okay, Mike. How much for the BAE vest?”
“Nothing. It’s yours. Just go and stop whoever’s tearing up my city.”
“Oh, I can’t do that. You have to take something—”
“Consider it my contribution to the effort.” On the last word he was lost to a bout of coughing. His elbow wasn’t sufficient shelter this time. He grabbed a box of Kleenex, wadded up half a dozen, and gagged into them.
Sarah stepped back to give him privacy. After a moment, Mike collected himself, then got to his feet.
“It’s the dank air down here. Always does this to me.” He started for the stairs. “I locked the doors upstairs because I wanted privacy when showing you the vest, but also because it’s closing time.” On the second step going up, he paused. “Grab that vest and come on up. This basement’ll kill me if I stay down another minute.”
Sarah did as she was told. She looped an arm through the center and carried it up after Mike. Upstairs, the lights were off except one by the exit door. The sun was almost down, the shadows long. She needed a taxi and she needed to get to Campbell’s Winery before the end of the day to see why Vivian had given her the address.
“Can you call me a taxi?” she asked.
Mike coughed into his Kleenex. He was right—the air upstairs was much easier to breathe.
Movement caught her eye and she ducked down in reflex. The man in the suit who had been haunting her for days stood three racks over. A chill raced down her back at the sight of him. The man lifted his left arm and pointed at the rear exit. Then he tapped at his wrist to signify time was running out.
Sarah frowned. Messages from the dead? What happened to Vivian? She tried to summon her sister, but as before in the presence of this man, she felt nothing from the other side.
Out front, a car took the corner that led onto Dayton a little too fast, tires screeching in protest. Sarah bent at the waist and peeked through the windows. An RCMP unmarked cruiser continued turning and ended up in the Army Surplus store’s parking lot. The besuited man gestured at the rear exit with more urgency, his arm jerking that way twice. Then he too looked out at the cruiser.
How could they find her so fast? She thought back to the Spy Vs. Spy store and tried to remember if she had mentioned where she was going next. The Realtor had given her a ride to the store. Had Mason gotten to him? Or did the Realtor call them to complain about the gun? However it had played out, they were here.
“You wanted a taxi?” Mike was asking.
“Not now. I think I’ll just use your back door.”
Mike had turned around at the front counter and was watching the two men get out of the cruiser and approach the store.
“Friends of yours?” he asked.
“You could say that. If friends are rogue cops who want to kill you.”
“These guys?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder at her. “They have a problem with you?”
She nodded. “Those guys. It’s personal with them. They’re trying to stop what I’m doing.”
“Well, fuck them,” Mike mumbled. “I fuckin’ hate bad cops.” He walked over to the glass door at the front of his store and crossed his arms. The cancer hadn’t taken everything away from Mike. He appeared formidable in his stance as he eyed down the cops on the other side of the glass.
Mason and Calder hadn’t listened to her warning to leave her alone at the airport. Like hounds with a scent, they wouldn’t give up. She peeked out the rear door, saw the alley was clear, then leaned back in to listen to Mike’s exchange with Mason and Calder.
“Got a warrant?” Mike yelled through the locked doors.
“Did you have a female customer within the last hour looking for a Kevlar vest?” Calder shouted back.
“I need to see your warrant.” Mike stood his ground.
“I don’t need a warrant to ask you a question,” Calder shouted.
“And I don’t have to answer any of your questions as a private citizen other than to identify myself.”
Calder’s mouth formed an O as he exhaled his tension. He turned to Mason to see what to do. Mason’s face was bandaged and his arm was in a cast. Looked good on him. Mason stepped closer to the door, his nose touching the glass. If the glass wasn’t there, Mason and Mike would feel each other’s breath on their cheeks.
“The woman we’re looking for is a fugitive of the law,” Mason said. “If she’s in there, you’re breaking the law, and if you are, then I will come th
rough this glass to arrest you, old man.”
Mike uncrossed his arms, lowered his hands, and gestured with his fingers to come forward. “Bring it on, fucking pigs. I got nothing to lose. And if I’m alive when this is over, those cameras over my shoulder will show how much of a bully the RCMP really are.” He slammed the glass and Mason jerked backwards. “Fucking cocksuckers!” Mike yelled.
Sarah spied a pair of steel handcuffs sitting outside their clamshell case on a small bench by the door. Behind the open case sat another dozen sets of handcuffs still wrapped and piled neatly in a box.
